When I first arrived on the island, I was bombarded by signs and ladies with uniforms advertising for their casinos. All of a sudden, I heard the little chime for text messages on my cell phone and voila! I got about 5 text messages advertising the various casinos in Macau. Once you got out the Macau ferry docks, it was clear that you were somewhere bizarre... like Vegas.
All of the casinos have free shuttle buses that bring you to another casino or to the ferry docks. It was absolutely insane. The strangest thing though? Despite all the casinos, many of the non-gambling related tourist attractions at Macau were... churches? Since Macau was once a Portuguese colony even before it became a colony, many Christian clergymen - such as Matteo Ricci - came to Macau to start their missions in China, hence all the churches.
(This picture of Matteo Ricci's statue in Macau isn't mine, it came from this site.)
There are also some Buddhist monuments there but somehow, my friends and I missed all of them. Strange. I'll just have to go again, I guess. That's perhaps the second strange juxtaposition in Macau: you'll have all of these European-looking buildings in an avenue but then all the signs are in Chinese and then you'll come across a section that looks very much like Hong Kong. Here's sort of an example:
Low European-style buildings:
Hong Kong-esque mix of apartment buildings:
The first church we came across was St. Dominic's church, a UNESCO world heritage site. It's in the square where there are a lot of tourists, so it's often very busy around the church.
The ruins of St. Paul's church was something that I've always wanted to see since my friend gave me a postcard with a photo of it at night. The church was made of wood, except for the facade and when it burned down in 1835, only the facade was left. It's quite a magnificent monument and it's another one of Macau's UNESCO world heritage sites.
After visiting St. Paul's, I got some postcards for my friends and I noticed that we didn't see the the Chapel of Our Lady Penha, which was one of the pictures on the postcard. A friend of mine said, "You can't buy it unless you see it," but I bought it anyways and we set off to find it.
At first, we ended up at St. Lawrence's church, not what we were looking for but a church nonetheless.
We looked at the map and trudged on. My friend led us up a hill in scorching 40 degree (celsius) weather. It was torturous and I nearly died on the way up (the climb is really tough, so be careful if you have any heart conditions or asthma) but it was totally worth it. When we got to the church, we were greeted by the sight of a priest (or some type of clergyman). It was strangely idyllic when you think of the fact that this church overlooks a whole bunch of casinos.
The view at the top of the hill was unsurpassed... (The crazy gold thing is the Lisboa casino, probably the most ostentatious casino in Macau.)
The church itself was also gorgeous!
There's also a little garden with this shrine to Mary and if you sit and face her, it feels as if you're in a quiet little corner in the forest. Quite a feat for a place like Macau. I don't consider myself as belonging to a religion therefore, I'm not religious at all but that silent moment by the shrine felt like a prayer in itself.
Finally it was time to go and my friends wanted to "win their fortunes" at a casino. When gambling, I think there's the adage that says, "Go big or go home." And go big we did. We took a bus to the Venetian Macao aka the biggest casino in the WORLD.
None of my friends won their fortunes but we did find humour in the fact that people actually rode these gondolas that traveled the artificial canals IN the casino. It was pretty ridiculous. And tacky.
All in all, Macau was fun but when they say that you only need a day to go through the entire island, they weren't kidding. So if you're visiting Macau, wake up early to catch the boat, gamble and explore and you can return to your house (rather than stay at an expensive hotel) late at night.
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